It’s all going to fall apart sooner or later, I know, but right now I’m seriously enjoying Shining Ark
As I said, I just know they’re going to mess it up somehow, but since the game is still going strong at 13 hours I should give credit where credit is due and acknowledge that the first quarter of Shining Ark is really good. But since the other shoe is going to drop sooner or later and I’ll feel silly being so happy about this game when it does (like I feel about Tokyo Majin right now, but we’ll talk later) I’ll make this a screenshot edition so I don’t have to talk too much.
This is our main character Fried Karim.
He looks a bit goofy and acts a bit kiddy, but he’s a good sort. The story starts when Fried finds a one-winged girl named Panis washed up on the beach. Fried himself washed up on the same beach as a baby and was taken in by an elf family, and now he brings Panis in to join the fold. Here are the main girls:
Panis is the girl on the left. I’m guessing the rest of her clothes were lost at sea. The girl on the right is Shannon, Fried’s older sister (who is not related to him by blood). Her relatively conservative outfit is a sign that Shannon has living parents who don’t let their daughter leave the house in her underwear. Good going, Mama and Papa Elf.
In typical Tony Taka fashion his girls are quite cute (less so than in the other PSP games IMHO) but the males and other NPCs… well just look at these fellows:
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Even Fried doesn’t want to look at Sunny Jim there. “Maybe if I close my eyes he’ll be gone when I open them again.” This is one of Tony Taka’s lazier casts, not that I’m an expert or anything.
So anyway Fried and Panis spend their life on their idyllic island doing all kinds of idyllic island things like fishing:
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They also harvest crops from their robot-tended backyard garden, get milk from sheep and do lots and lots of quests for the village folk. They also make extremely tasty-looking breads and muffins and burgers and sandwiches in their household oven. It all looks so good I can’t believe I forgot to take a screenshot of any of them ^^;; but you can get a glimpse of one from this quest screenshot:
Just look at that lightly grilled surface and those succulent slices of salmon. Ah, I want a smoked salmon sandwich! Sega, this is most unfair! Baking has been somewhat simplified from Shining Hearts. You don’t need flour or yeast or sugar any more, just whatever the main ingredients are, e.g. milk, or eggs, or salmon and lettuce for the sandwich above. The explanation is that Fried’s adoptive parents run a bakery and have all the basics already. Okay, I’ll buy that.
Still, all is not well in paradise. The monsters on the island have been getting more populous and more aggressive lately, so going out to do anything from digging potatoes to picking flowers requires you to pick off some monsters first. The system is largely the same as Shining Blade‘s, but with a few notable differences.
1. You’re stuck with Panis as a party member. She can’t be controlled (though you can give her suggestions) but you can attempt to influence her personality by feeding her certain types of bread. A waste of good bread, if you ask me.
2. Panis is the only songstress and she only sings when she feels like it. :-/
3. I’m really happy that battles are slightly more challenging than in Blade. I haven’t been wiped out yet, but some party members have dropped dead. Now it’s actually advisable to dodge enemy attacks as you run towards them instead of just tanking everything. Bosses in particular can hit really hard.
4. There are regular attacks from giant monsters who have to be fended off with cannons:
But cannons have HP plus cooldown periods, so you can’t just fire them at will. Fire, cool down, fire, cool down, repair if they get destroyed and try to stay alive the whole time while doing it. I love those battles, they’re so much fun. It’s a thrill to take on something 100x your own size, something that can wipe your party and the whole island out if you fail so you feel the burden of protecting everyone on your shoulders.
5. Later on you get an upgradeable ship with cannons mounted on it, the better to fight off the pirates attacking the island plus the occasional sea monster. It’s not that different from from regular cannon battles, but you have a smaller field to work with and have to work harder to avoid enemy attacks.
It’s still a little easy as most harem RPGs (except Agarest Senki Mariage) tend to be, but it’s a big step in the right direction. If they had a hard mode that was about 25% harder than this with a wider variety of monsters, that would be great.
The village map looks like this and the red exclamation mark shows people you need to talk to if you want to move the story forward:
Which means I don’t have to progress the story until and unless I’m ready to do so, but there’s only so much you can do in one day so in practice I’m always moving forward. The pacing is a bit slow, but hastening the story along will only hasten Shining Ark’s destruction as well so maybe things are better this way.
What’s happening right now: 1. Random giant monsters keep trying to attack the island. There seems to be a link between Panis touching certain statues and monsters showing up. 2. Random people keep showing up and trying to kill Panis, just because. One of them is Sakuya/Maxima from the earlier games. She’s wearing a mask (and very little else) but I’d know that bust anywhere. Nothing good ever happens when she’s involved, so I don’t know why the writers keep shoving her into every game. I can think of two prominent reasons, though. I’m going to get on with my fishing and baking and fighting and hope she doesn’t show up again for a long, long time.
Oh cripes, did they really name two characters Fried and PANIS?
Also wow, does that one lady really have a dog nose?
Yup, Fried (pronounced ‘Freed’) and Panis. Is there a problem, officer?
And yes, Maia-sensei is a dog-human-hybrid thingy. I have a wolf man in my party and a lion-man for a mayor and they’re both drawn very animal-like so they don’t look weird at all. Kinda cool, in fact. Maia is just… what was Tony Taka drinking?
Looks like you’re handling the whole “let’s just throw exposition out of the window” thing much better than I did. I also found the laid back atmosphere really clashed with the whole people are trying to kill us plot, I mean, honestly? Singing to the garden and the fish? Anyhow, I’m glad you’re enjoying the game more than I did because despite the flaws, the gameplay itself quite good.
I’ve seen Shining Hearts’s idea of exposition and it wasn’t pretty. Shining Blade was even worse. There’s no shame in a developer admitting they can’t write and focusing on making the game fun to play instead. I’m having a great time.